The scientific and practical challenge is determining how investigators can distinguish, with relatively limited initial evidence, which cases are more likely to involve production, solicitation of minors, and/or contact offending.
Briggs, Simon, and Simonsen (2011) identified 30 offenders who were considered to be contact driven and 21 who were deemed to be fantasy driven.
For example, two programs (Fairplay and Roundup) have identified millions of computers involved in peer-to-peer sharing of child pornography files in the United States (U. Although more resources are being devoted to peer-to-peer investigations, many police investigators continue to conduct proactive, undercover investigations—in which they pretend to be a minor online—in anticipation of solicitation attempts by adults (Mitchell, Wolak, & Finkelhor, 2005; Briggs, Simon, & Simonsen, 2011).
Although resources for law enforcement in this area are increasing, the reality is that only some cases will be fully investigated and prosecuted.
It is hard to obtain precise estimates of Internet sexual offending in the United States, as there is no national system for integrating information about Internet offenders at the state level and there are state-by-state variations in the applicable laws.
However, the National Juvenile Online Victimization Study, conducted in 2000 and again in 2009, indicates that the number of arrests in the United States for Internet sex crimes has tripled over that time (Wolak, 2012; Wolak, Finkelhor, & Mitchell, 2011).